Comment by rubygeek on 04/07/2020 at 20:16 UTC

27 upvotes, 2 direct replies (showing 2)

View submission: A look at the Gemini protocol: a brutally simple alternative to the web

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The problem with this is that is that this is not what content providers for the most part wants to show you.

Because if content providers wanted to just send you the text and some basics, the can do that just fine with HTML today.

The ones that would do it **already do** for the most part. You can often browse their sites just fine with Lynx you want a guarantee they're not doing nefarious stuff.

Given the subject, https://prog21.dadgum.com/[1][2] is a good example - it has some styles, but look at the network tab in your browser and reload - 4.3K + a favicon. No extra files. Great content.

1: https://prog21.dadgum.com/

2: https://prog21.dadgum.com/

But most people posting stuff online want at least *some* of the modern niceties, and few of them will republish their content in a more basic format like this. People might have some luck in pushing hard for a resurgence in more semantic markup so that it's possible to e.g. index specifically sites that are likely to render well with clients with the kind of restrictions you mention turned on.

But something like Gemini is unlikely to ever be more than a tiny little niche.

Of course there are a *lot* of people online - a tiny little niche relative to all of humanity might well be a large enough and interesting enough community for a lot of people.

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Comment by ergotofwhy at 05/07/2020 at 02:53 UTC

1 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Thats a perfectly reasonable breakdown of the issues.

Comment by Misicks0349 at 18/12/2020 at 15:47 UTC

1 upvotes, 0 direct replies

the main gemini project does address the question of "well why not just use HTML only"